


3,941 Days Later

by ronniedae



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Hurt, M/M, Post-Divorce, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 11:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12556112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ronniedae/pseuds/ronniedae
Summary: (or; how long does it take to regret a mistake?)Hidden among the medals in the tiny spare room in Otabek’s Almaty apartment is his favourite. It wasn’t won, and certainly not deserved. It’s a small copper coin, a silly trinket picked up in some dusty shack on the way to an exhibition in Carolina. Bought as a joke, 24 days before they were married.Best Husband. It reads.It’s the only one he’s ever been proud of. And the only one that’s completely worthless.A sequel to 1,674 Days





	3,941 Days Later

**Author's Note:**

> A ten-year later sequel to 1,674 Days - I recommend that you read this one for for the sake of ~full effect~.

**3,941 Days Later  
(or; how long does it take to regret a mistake?)**

923 days after Otabek leaves his first husband, he leaves his second in a similar fashion; suddenly and without remorse. It was silly, really, to have married the man in the first place. Unhappy and desperate for change, he supposes, led his heart down a foolish path.

Still, he regrets neither marriage, and as he ends the second, he hardly thinks of the first.

714 days later he marries again. 174 days after that, he files divorce papers for the third time before he’s thirty.

He decides marriage isn’t for him.

Ice skating, however, is. He takes home his third Olympic gold in the Milan Winter Olympics, bringing his grand total to seven. _A record breaker_ , they call him. _The best they’ve ever seen._

 _What will he do next?_ The question lingers on everyone’s lips. _Retirement_ , comes the answer.

So, 2,387 days after his third divorce, he steps down. Leaves a podium littered with flowers and devastation and boxes up his skates in the back of his closet. Leo finally calls 3 days later, begging to know if he’s okay and he continues to insist he’s _just fine_. JJ is less subtle, betting that he’s going to _pull some Victor Nikiforov bullshit_ , and _come back better than ever_.

Otabek decides he’s long overdue a break.

\--

A little known fact about Otabek Altin is that he can name every shade of the kaleidoscopic colours that pepper the mosaic walls of Park Guell. There are over one hundred thousand shards of coloured tile pressed delicately in to their concrete settings. Only about 6,000 of those are green.

He spent half of his teenage years training an eight-minute bike ride from the entrance. He knows this park better than he knows himself. Four days after his sixteenth birthday, on a drizzling Wednesday evening, he jumps the gates, snagging his favourite leather jacket on the way over. He thinks little of it as he trails his way up the beaten steps.

He drops to the ground seconds after the light turns out and the security guard yells out. He’s on his back, uncomfortably spread out over three steps when he spots it. He waits for light to switch off before hurriedly grabbing his pocket knife.

It’s perfect.

\--

157 days after he retires, Otabek finds himself on those very steps; tracing the outline of the missing tile that still burns a hole in his back pocket. It’s only a little after nine in the morning and the park is already filling up with a steady stream of people. He makes his way further up the track; to the balcony he brought Yuri to all those years ago.

He’s almost disappointed when it looks the same.

 

 

It’s been 3,807 days since Otabek’s marriage to Yuri officially ended. Since then, he has left a string of broken-hearted lovers in his wake. Now, he finds himself in his Almaty apartment; it’s run down, and cold regardless of the season. He holds on to it purely out of nostalgia. And only one lover is on his mind.

The tiny excuse for a second bedroom is littered with trophies and medals from a career spanning 12 days shy of fifteen years.

It takes Otabek until now; when he is 34 years old and a washed-up ex-Olympian star, to realise that he only cares about four of them. He’s trying to pinpoint the moment the bubble popped when his phone buzzes in his left-breast pocket. It startles him to life.

“Where the fuck are you?” Comes the Canadian drawl.

“Almaty.”

“Ew, why? You hate it there.” He hears the gleeful squeal of children in the background “Hold on –” The line gets quieter.

“ – Come stay with me and Isabella.”

A frown presses deep in his cheeks. “I don’t know..”

“Why not? You can’t just retire out of the blue and haul yourself up in that shitty little flat.”

Otabek shifts. “Hey, it’s not that bad.”

“Otabek. Don’t be ridiculous. Just come stay.”

“The baby’s only a month old, I don’t want to intrude when you’ve got stuff going on.”

“Even more reason to come!” JJ’s voices hushes over the line. “Please come help me, Otabek. They’re little demons. The lot of them.”

Otabek stays silent.

“You love babies.” JJ goads. “There’s a teeny tiny one right here, she has really soft hair.”

The comment earns a bemused snort from Otabek. “Soft hair? Really? That’s all you can say about your new born!”

“Hey! I’m actually kind of jealous, to be honest!”

Otabek laughs now, though the sound is foreign; resonating in his chest.

“Come on. The kids miss you.” With that, JJ’s hiding place has been found. The line fills with excited chatter; “Is that Uncle Beka? I wanna speak to him!”

“See?” The tone in JJ’s voice is inviting enough for him to eventually agree.

\--

Hidden among the medals in the tiny spare room in Otabek’s Almaty apartment is his favourite. It wasn’t won, and certainly not deserved. It’s a small copper coin, a silly trinket picked up in some dusty shack on the way to an exhibition in Carolina. Bought as a joke, 24 days before they were married.

 _Best Husband_. It reads.

It’s the only one he’s ever been proud of. And the only one that’s completely worthless.

\--

“Have you ever spoken to Yuri since… y’know?” JJ asks; the question comes as a shock 16 days after Otabek lands in Toronto. It hits him in a way he doesn’t expect it to. Suddenly, he is left winded and searching for words.

“N… no.” He stumbles over the simple response.

“Not even once? After everything?”

Otabek shies away, desperate to hide his face. Luckily, JJ is distracted by the cooing baby in his arms.

“Why’d you ask?”

“Uh…” It’s JJ’s turn to stumble now. “Isabella saw him.” He confesses.

“Oh? Where?” A pit appears in Otabek’s gut.

“Henri had a skating exhibition in New York, all the finalists of this year’s juniors were there.”

The pit widens. “And so was Yuri?”

A strained silence falls between them, JJ brings the baby to his chest and wraps a blanket around her.

“He was a coach.”

The pit grows again, it rumbles; hungry for an explanation. It doesn’t get one.

“Oh.” Otabek responds and unanswered questions continue begging to be asked.

 

 

It’s been 3,783 days since Otabek has last seen Yuri; and just when the pit in his stomach has begun to repair itself, he spots him leaning up against a coffee bar in Toronto Airport. And for the first time in nearly ten years, Otabek realises he is still in love with him.

Something is pulling him from his uncomfortable metal seat, begging him to walk the hundred yards to where Yuri stands. He’s grabbing his suitcase when he sees them. Those crystal green soldier’s eyes he fell in love with almost two decades ago. Except they’re framed with dark brown hair. They’re slapped on a face of a little girl peeping out from behind his ex-husbands’ legs.

They practically cut his heart out.

He whips around and makes his way to the gate. He spends his flight home numb and helpless.                                                                                                                               

\--

It takes 24 days from the moment Otabek sees the green-eyed girl to the moment he books a flight to Japan and checks in to the Katsuki Onsen. He never quite figures out what possessed him to do it, but suddenly he’s staring at a shocked Yuuri, and a disgruntled Victor.

“I was in the area.” He pleads. It’s a pathetic excuse and they know it.

“It’s been 10 years.” He pleads again.

“I’ll be gone tomorrow.” He mutters, turning his head to avoid their looks.

Yuuri sighs, and shoots Victor a warning look before handing Otabek the keys to his room.

“He’s not here, anyway.” Otabek doesn’t need to ask who Yuuri’s talking about.

Otabek makes his way down the hall, ignoring the sudden loss that pangs in his gut. When he gets to his room, he wonders whether Yuuri gave him this one on purpose, or if he simply had no idea.

As he opens the closet door, he’s shocked to find their initials still carved in to the frame. He traces over them and the crudely drawn heart in between. A soft knock comes to the door.

He finds Yuuri again, and finds himself mumbling more pleas and apologies.

“I’m sorry. I’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“It’s okay Otabek, you look like you need a break.” Yuuri’s smile is soft and welcoming. “I brought you some katsudon.”

Otabek gratefully accepts the bowl, realising he hasn’t eaten since yesterday.

“Thanks.” He can’t seem to meet his eyes. “I really will be gone tomorrow.”

\--

He ends up staying for six days, Yuri comes on the fifth.

Following his little known excursion to Park Guell after his 16th birthday, on a motorcycle stolen from his coach, Otabek nearly crashes in the lethal streets of the Gothic Quarter. He takes a corner too fast and nearly smashes in to a delivery van. He manages to swerve just in time, but ends up cracking his helmet on the pavement and wheeling the busted bike back. He spends a week wheezing through broken ribs before confessing his rebellion to his coach.

Yuri’s arrival is unexpected. It sends him barrelling; as if he tumbled on to the Barcelona pavement again.

Except this time, it feels as if he hit the van.        

“Yura.” The name falls from his lips like fresh snow.

The look he receives in return is more like ice.

“Otabek.” And his name may as well have been carved from a glacier.

The green-eyed girls peeps from behind Yuri’s legs again. And for the second time this month Otabek is convinced someone is actually gouging his heart out with a blunt knife.

He’s walked in to a heated debate, and he can see the desperation still trying to find from Yuuri’s face. Victor mutters to him, something along the lines of “I knew we shouldn’t have let him stay here.”

Yuri is furious; it’s written in the veins on his wrist and the frown in his brow. The green-eyed girl shifts uncomfortably. She tugs on the hem of Yuri’s shirt.

He softens for a moment as he looks at her, “Upstairs, Lilia.”

Otabek feels the pit in his stomach from months ago open again as the girl runs to Yuuri. He ushers her up the stairs, dragging Victor behind him.

Under Yuri’s resentful gaze, the pit swallows him whole. He waits for it to come, and when it does, it’s laced in bitter spite.

“How dare you come here.” It’s a statement as opposed to a question.

“Yuri, I – ”

“No way, Otabek! No way in Hell could you possibly even _dream_ of showing your face here.” Yuri speaks through clenched teeth.

“It’s been ten years, Yuri.” He pleads.

“Not long enough!” He snaps back.

The pit consumes him. He needs out. Now. He turns; pivots passed Yuri and burst through the doors in to the cold night. He’s trying to catch his breath but the cold keeps stealing it from him.

Then Yuri is barrelling out in to the snow after him.

“Can you remember that teacup?” He blurts, lips already staining blue in the late November cold.

“I found it y’know?” He blusters before Otabek can get the chance to respond. “Years later. After I finally managed to pick myself up and move out of the apartment that _you_ ruined.” He points an accusatory finger at Otabek; his words are drenched in spite.

“I found it boxed in the back of the cupboard. I knew what it was even before I really knew what it was.” He slumps on a nearby bench. Otabek turns around but can’t bring himself to sit next to him.

The snow is falling heavy; neither of them shiver.

“You left me. Broken, in pieces, on the kitchen floor like that goddamn fucking teacup.” Yuri runs his hands through his hair as Otabek watches a decade of emotions bubble to the surface. “And I fucking loved that teacup.”

His words linger in the dense winter air. Otabek struggles to remember the teacup because all he can really think about is the brown-haired, green-eyed girl and he knows the answer will make the pit grow but he asks it anyway.

“Lilia looks just like you. I heard she took home gold in the juniors? You and your husband must be proud.” The words are barely above a whisper.

“Really?” He spits. “You think I had a kid? Just upped and married someone else after the way you left me?”

Otabek is dumbfounded. “Then – ”

“She’s Mila’s and Sara’s, Otabek. For Christ’s sake.” Yuri leans over, running his hands through his hair. “I can’t _fucking_ believe you.”

“Yuri –”

“Seriously, Otabek?” Yuri cuts him off. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt me? I didn’t even get an explanation! I still have no idea why you left me!”

Otabek is crestfallen. “You know why.”

“What?” Confusion takes over Yuri’s features.

“You hurt me, Yuri! I tried and tried for _months_ to forgive you. But I couldn’t, okay? So you don’t get to scream at me for all the bad things I’ve done when you can’t even live up to your own!” He regrets the words and the elevation in his voice as soon as they leave his throat.

Yuri laughs; “You’re kidding me, right?”

Otabek doesn’t respond.

“Otabek. You’ve got to be _fucking_ kidding me. I was drunk. And 19. And fucking stupid so please tell me that _you’re fucking kidding me_?”

“It hurt, Yuri.”

Yuri sits up, throwing his hands to the top of his head. “I know, Otabek! I know it did! I beat myself up about it for months! I did everything I could to try and make it up to you!”

“It wasn’t enough.” Otabek confesses.

Yuri’s breath catches in his throat, and he shakes his head in disbelief. “You ended our marriage because of one stupid, drunken thing.”

“It wasn’t stupid to me. It completely changed the way I thought of you, okay? I thought I was more than that to you.”

The ferocity slips back in to Yuri’s voice. “You were fucking _everything_ to me.”

“Yura – ”

“No.” Yuri’s voice is calm and level.

“But, Yura – ”

“No!” It’s louder.

“But – ”

“No!” He’s yelling now. Up, off the bench and pacing around the fresh fallen snow. “You don’t get to call me that.”

Otabek stands, following Yuri’s footprints in the snow. “Yura – ”

“No! That name was reserved for someone who loved me. For someone who swore never to hurt me. For someone who stood up in front of all our family and friends and promised ‘til death do us part’! Well, Otabek, last I checked we’re both still breathing.”

As if to confirm his point, Yuri’s shallow breaths leave plumes in the freezing air. And as if by some cruel twist of fate, Otabek’s breathing stops.

The snow starts to fall again, lighter this time.

“Otabek.” His name comes. Breathy and light. His lungs remember to breathe.

“I loved you.”

“Yura, I –”

“Past tense.” His heart stops beating this time.

“It killed me, to get over you. It certainly killed my career. Fuck –” Yuri’s voice breaks, almost giving him away. “ –it took me five years to even get back on the ice.”

“You never came back.” It’s as if Otabek has only realised that in the moment, it leaves him lost and searching.

“How the fuck could I? Huh?” Yuri is seething now; finally shaking but it’s the anger running through him that causes it instead of the dipping temperature.

“You ruined my life, Otabek! All I’d ever thought about – since I first learned how – was skating. It’s all I trained for. All I worked for. _You_ took it away from me!”

His words, poisonous and dripping, continue to bounce around the courtyard.

“Then you have the _fucking audacity_ to show up here after ten. Fucking. Years.” He storms around; kicking stones across the yard like an angry teenager. “Just go home.”

The crack in his voice causes Otabek to meet his eyes.

“Please. Just go.” Yuri turns, defeated, and makes his way back to the onsen.

The temperature drops in the moment; the winds picks up, sending flurries of soft snow across his path.

Otabek runs across the courtyard, nearly slipping on the icy steps down to the onsen entrance.

“Yura.” His voice is desperate, and he doesn’t expect him to turn around but he does.

His hair is almost silver in the moonlight; eyes greener than ever. In that moment, Otabek sees a missed decade of love. Of grocery shopping and apartment searching and exhibitions and lazy Sundays and skate practice and kisses on park benches and farmers markets and bike rides; the kind where Otabek drives so fast that Yuri screams with glee and clings around his waist with both arms and both legs and he nearly struggles to keep his balance.

Like now; he loses his balance on the icy steps and suddenly Yuri is pinned in between him and door.

He kisses him, and the world stills.

It never really comes back to life, he realises another decade later; when his hair is peppered grey and his most prominent wrinkles are his frown lines. Even as Yuri tenses beneath him. Even as his hands push against his chest and hips. Even as he turns his head away.

Tears melt in to the snow. Otabek can’t tell who they belong to.

“I’m sure Yuuri will help you book a flight home.” Then Yuri slips inside the onsen doors; leaving Otabek lost and long overstayed his welcome.

\--

Half a day later, Yuuri insists that Otabek keeps the money for his room. “You looked like you needed a break.” He insists. The man has always been soft, and forgiving. Far too much so in Otabek’s case.

They both shuffle in the uneasy silence; memories of a long ago engagement party echo off the walls. Yuuri wants to talk; Otabek doesn’t know if he can bear it.

“Where’s home nowadays?” It seems his wayward lifestyle is not passed the reaches of Japan.

“Almaty.”

“Ah.” The silence settles again, though the sound of Victor cheering on about ‘wedded bliss’ from a decade ago keeps ringing in his ears.

“I have something for you.” The statement snaps him back to reality, and Yuuri is standing there with a shoebox.

He raises his eyebrow, questioning.

“These walls are paper thin, Otabek.”

He takes the box, and like Yuri all those years ago, knows what’s in it before he even opens it. The thumbs the handle of the broken teacup; rolling it over in his palm he catches rolls of dried glue along the edge.

“He tried to fix it at some point.” Yuuri mumbles. “I think it was some kind of thing for him. There was a piece missing though, so…”

“Thanks, Yuuri.” Otabek is sincere, closing the lid to the shoebox and making room for it in his bag. “Well, I’ll be off then. Thank you for letting me stay.”

“Sure, it was… nice to see you again.”

Otabek manages a strained smile and turns to pull the exit door.

“He’s moved on Otabek, you should too.”

The pit swells again. His lips still tingle from the stolen kiss. He spends another flight home in a frozen stupor; a soft “Beka” from Yuri still lingering between his teeth from the night before.

 

 

It’s been 112 days since he last saw Yuri, and again, he finds himself in Almaty. The low hum of the bar bulb brings light to the apartment for the eighth time in the last six months. His neighbours are going to think he’s moved back in.

He wipes the dust off the kitchen table before placing the shoebox on top. It takes him longer than expected, but he finds the half empty tube of hi-tec gold glue and gets to work.

He works through the night, and well in to the morning. The blistering Kazakh sun has him wiping sweat off his brow sometime before 10am. He’s exhausted, but it’s finished. Almost.

He goes back to his bags; unceremoniously dumped by the front door, and grabs his wallet. Hidden in the back. Transferred from wallet to wallet and travelled across the globe in the 6,783 days since he pried it out of the Guell wall. A tile chip. It’s the exact jade green hue of Yuri’s eyes and fits perfectly in to the missing piece of the teacup. Almost as if it was always meant to be there.

He digs around the dusty flat for some bubble wrap, eventually finding it in the tiny room. Then he sends it. Spends half an exhibition’s earnings on guaranteed next day to Moscow.

A fixed teacup.

A peace offering.

A declaration of love.

\--

The delivery driver wakes Yuri a little over twelve hours later. He ushers his lover back to sleep as he unwraps the beaten shoebox. He spends half a lifetime thumbing the gold-filled cracks.

“Yuri.” His name comes beckoning; dripped in velvet, from the bedroom.

He catches the delivery driver as he’s finishing his rounds in the apartment block; leaning out of his van, struggling to light a cigarette.

“Return to sender?” The man asks.

“Yes."

He crawls back in to bed, hands cold from the frosty Moscow morning. He wraps his arms around his bedfellow.

“You’re fucking freezing.” Comes a muffled response.

“Hmm.” Yuri hums in agreement against his lips. “Let’s get married.”

He receives a grin and kisses in response. The morning gets warmer.

\--

It’s been 3,940 days since his first divorce. A decade and a half to realise that he made a mistake. He’s bent over the rusted railings of his Almaty apartment, flicking cigarette ash in to the pot of long-dead magnolias. The sky is coloured pink. An unopened shoebox sits on the decking table. A full glass and a half-empty bottle of whiskey perches next to it. Otabek flips an old copper coin between his thumb and fingers.

Suddenly, he is 21. The sky is the same colour except the skyline belongs to St. Petersburg. A cat purrs at his feet. His husband is asleep on his chest. His dissertation notes lay scattered on almost every surface in the house; he needs the book balancing on the arm of the sofa that’s just out of his reach.

Yuri stirs; burying his face in to Otabek’s chest. He groans, clearly unhappy to be awake. Otabek closes his notebook and drops it to the floor; his hand now resting on the nape of Yuri’s neck. They kiss. It’s simple and delicate; framed in the yellows and pinks of the late evening sun.

The kiss deepens, and suddenly they’re shifting on the sofa to bring their bodies closer together. Yuri’s legs wrap around Otabek’s waist as he moves over him; peppering kisses from his mouth down his cheek and across his jaw. He’s busy painting his neck purple when the cat yells.

The quick shift in atmosphere has them both laughing as the cat treads her way up along the back of the sofa to meet them. She buries herself between them; purring loud and deep. Yuri’s attention shifts to her and he buries his face in her soft fur and coos in a voice reserved only for her.

Otabek smiles, and when Yuri catches his eye, it turns in to a grin. Yuri’s brows in sceptical confusion. “What?” He asks, wondering if Otabek is about to tease him for the way he speaks to the cat again.

He doesn’t, though. He simply supplies a deeply felt “I love you.” And then it’s Yuri’s turn to grin. He reaches out to touch Otabek’s face.

“I love you too.”

Ash lands in his whiskey and suddenly Otabek is forced back in to the present moment. The sky is now a deep black; the sun fades late and fast during Almaty summers. It seems the stars have forgotten to shine tonight.

As the 3,941st day since his divorce to Yuri rolls around, Otabek finds the pit in his stomach again. This time, it swallows him whole.

 

_Fuck._

**Author's Note:**

> It's been on my mind for a while - hope you enjoyed! :)
> 
> Catch me on tumblr - seeyounextlevel.tumblr.com / twitter - ronniedae
> 
> :D


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